no resale value here
December 28, 2005,

This This AP story about a a British study is causing quite a stir�

Of all the toys I had, the fashion dolls were the toys that came with a code. A set of appropriate behaviors. Wear heels. Wear skirts. Wear pink. Be tall, thin, blonde, buxom. Dress it this way, buy this for it, cry to mommy and daddy for that for it. I hated that pressure. I hated that the doll looked A) nothing like me and B) like the conventional definition of physical beauty. What did that say about my acceptability in the world?

What the world, and what my parents, seemed to want from me was completely remote from who I really was. And sometimes, because I was a child, and children are immature, in rebelling against those expectations, I took it out on the toy.

There, in a nutshell, is why my Barbie dolls got �mutilated�*. And usually wore simple tunics of kleenex held on by a rubberband. And �lived� in modestly furnished corrugated cartons.

Damn. My Barbie dolls were apparently in a cult. Well, it was the seventies.

*Mutilations, in my case, included dying the hair with a brown marker, cutting most of it off, and drawing spectacles on the face in ballpoint. Yeah, I had short brown hair and glasses. Why?